Year: 2014

A video of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford ranting in a Jamaican accent and slurring his words on Monday was a "minor setback," he said, maintaining that his personal life did not interfere with his job. I had a minor setback. We all experience these difficult bumps in life," Ford said at a press conference called on Wednesday to discuss the city's budget vote. "Folks, that is absolute nonsense." Ford, who pledged last year to clean up his act after a crack-smoking scandal, admitted on Tuesday he had been drinking the previous evening when the video was shot at a suburban eatery.

By Ian Simpson The company behind a chemical spill that left about 300,000 people in West Virginia without tap water failed to disclose a second chemical in the leak, state officials said on Wednesday. The company, Freedom Industries, had previously said that only one chemical, crude MCHM, had spilled from one of its storage tanks into the Elk River at Charleston on January 9. Freedom Industries told the state Department of Environmental Protection on Tuesday that a second chemical, PPH, was in the above-ground tank despite an order immediately after the spill to disclose what was in it, the department said in a statement. Governor Earl Ray Tomblin said he was "very disappointed" that it took Freedom Industries, a maker of specialty chemicals, 12 days to disclose the presence of PPH.

Opinion: Weight loss resolutions are part of diet culture, harmful to health. Story · Comments … Guilt is not an ingredient in any food. But the value …

By David Ingram WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. consumers will likely have to wait until 2015 or later to see a court-ordered advertising blitz detailing tobacco companies’ deception, a lag of nine years after the original ruling, a court heard on Wednesday. Tobacco lawyers said at the hearing in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., that they planned to push forward with an appeal about the wording of the ads, even after they struck an agreement this month with the Justice Department and anti-smoking advocates about what the ad campaign would look like in newspapers and on television. The companies have fought the lawsuit since President Bill Clinton’s Justice Department filed it in 1999, alleging the cigarette makers engaged in racketeering by hiding from the public the health consequences of tobacco use. U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler said Wednesday the latest appeal would likely delay the ads until 2015 or later.

By Joseph Lichterman DETROIT (Reuters) – The judge overseeing Detroit's bankruptcy denied a request from creditors to have an official say in valuing the city's art collection and said he will announce his decision next Tuesday on a request from Detroit retirees to block cuts to their healthcare. Rhodes said he did not have the legal authority to approve the creation of the creditors' committee that would have examined the works of the Detroit Institute of Arts. But even if he could have legally done so, Rhodes said he would not have approved the creation of the committee because discussion of the art should wait until after Detroit submits its plan of adjustment to the court by March 1. Rhodes implored the city and its creditors to do their best to negotiate settlements before that deadline.

By Ben Hirschler DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) – Multinational companies are becoming more picky about emerging market investments as slowing growth in upstart economies and a recovery in the West takes the shine off a previous sure-fire strategic bet. Now the gold rush is over," said Jeff Joerres, chief executive of staffing company Manpower Group , whose clients include many top international firms. Emerging markets will still grow at a faster clip than developed markets this year but the difference in growth rates will be the lowest since 2002. The balance between emerging and developed economies is a central topic at this week's World Economic Forum annual meeting in the Swiss Alps, as highlighted by a session on Thursday entitled "BRICS in Midlife Crisis?" Growth rates for Brazil, Russia, India and China are half their pre-financial crisis levels – and companies are taking a hard look at alternatives beyond the "big four".

More than 6.3 million Americans were deemed eligible for government healthcare plans for the poor since the October 1 launch of President Barack Obama's healthcare law through December, federal officials reported on Wednesday. The swelling rolls for Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) reflect both an expansion of Medicaid under Obama's Affordable Care Act (ACA) and what healthcare policy analysts call an "out-of-the-woodwork effect," in which people who heard about Obamacare sought to obtain health insurance and discovered that they had qualified for Medicaid even before the law expanded eligibility. "We have people who for the first time will have some health security that they never had before," Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, said of the Medicaid numbers at the winter meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors in Washington, D.C. It was not clear how much credit goes to the healthcare law, however.